Protector (32 page)

“Well, I think you need a little remembrance of why to come back
,” he says with a sneaky smile.

“Oh
, yeah?  What do you have in mind?”

He pulls her even closer and grabs t
he back of her head to pull her in for a deep passionate kiss.

She pulls away just barely and smiles.  She whispers so close to his lips he could still taste her
.  “Is that all?”

He smiles back and without saying a word he kisses her once again, this time not letting up for a break.  They kiss deep and hard
, letting all of their emotions run through their lips as their tongues roll around and caress the other. 

They make love for a few hours and by the time they are both spent and satisfied they both roll over onto
their backs and pant for breath.

“Wow
!” Alessandro says.

“I second that.” 
Anna-Marie rolls over on her side.  “You are a very sneaky man, Alessandro Pierre.”

“Me?  What did I do?”

“You know what you did, or am I supposed to believe it is a coincidence that you have distracted me for-” she looks over at the clock on the table, “. . . two hours?”

“Aww
. . . does that mean it is too late to drive tonight?” he says still smiling his sly smile.

“Okay fine, you win, this time, but I am leaving tomorrow morning
, no matter how good your kisses feel.”

“Well
, thank you for pacifying me, mi amore.  I won’t try to stop you tomorrow, I promise.  I do feel better that you will be traveling during the day, though.”

“I know.  I am just anxious to get this over with.”

“I know you are.  All you have to do is go there, ask your questions, then come back home to me.”

She slides closer to him and lays her head on his chest
and listens to his heart pound in his chest.

He wraps his arm around her and they both fall into a blissful sleep.

***

By seven the next morning,
Anna-Marie pulls away from the expansive manor heading toward Highway 70 to go home to Pamlico County.

The two
-hour drive through the country goes by uneventfully, as usual, but as soon as she crosses the border of Craven County into Pamlico County, she catches her breath.  It’s not been quite a year since she had last been here and during that time everything seems to have changed. 

The last time she was here was when she and Dylan had spent their last Thanksgiving with both of their parents
, a week later Dylan was dead.  At that time the four lane road wasn’t even close to being finished, making her humble little country roads look ugly with torn down trees and mounds of dirt everywhere.  The construction leading up to this end result was nothing short of hideous.  It’s amazing they got any tourists at all during those five long years.

She decides to keep driving long past the road that leads to the back roads to her parents
’ house.  She wants to see more of this new county that has been her home for her first eighteen years. 

Sure enough, just past the newly extended high school and in front of the courthouse there is a second stop light.  Her mother told her there was one, but it was hard to imagine it.

She pulls over to the gas station across from the courthouse and marvels at the wonders she has seen.

“Wow, Dylan would be impressed
,” she says to herself without thinking first.

Her smile fades
away at the thought of him.  Dylan will most likely never witness these changes.

She starts her car up and turns back onto the road and heads down highway 55 towards Oriental, where her parents await their baby girl’s arrival.

As she pulls up the driveway, she sees both of her parents sitting impatiently on the wraparound porch in their individual wicker rocking chairs.  She had lived in this house her whole life and had loved every minute of it.  It is the perfect quintessential cottage on the creek, with its graying wooden exterior from resting so close to the water for so many years and moss grass sprouting up everywhere. 

She can barely get out of the car before they barrel her over. 

“Hey, mama.”

“Oh
, honey, I’m so glad you’re here,” her mom says with a big hug.

Anna
-Marie pulls back and looks at her mom for the first in what seems like months and is shocked to see how old she looks.  Her once stoic posture is more slanted over her thin frame and her once dark hair is flanked with gray, and wrinkles have started to crease in her skin. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner
,” Anna-Marie says and hugs her mom again, knowing it is because of her that her mom has aged so much in such a short amount of time.

“Well, you’re here now.”

Her mom reluctantly lets go of her.  Next is her father’s turn.

“Hey
, Anna-Banana!  How have you been?”

“I’ve been doing really well actually
,” she says and smiles as if to prove it.  She knows a lot of her newfound happiness is greatly due to her new relationship with Alessandro.  She is sure they would be happy for her to hear about it, but she decides to keep that conversation to herself, for a little while anyway.  It seems too soon.  Only a couple of weeks ago, her mom was scraping her off her couch.

“We’re so happy to have you home.  Come on, we were just talking about making breakfast.”

“Great, I’m starved.”

After a huge breakfast, Anna-Marie and her mom take their cups of coffee and head for the garden out back.  Her and her mom created this garden as a way of bonding during those turbulent teenage years.  It was a good way to keep them both grounded and sane.  It started out little more than a flower bed with just a couple of rows of assorted wild flowers, but now it covers most of the back yard.  Anna-Marie’s vision for the garden was mirrored by none other than the plantation garden.  Who knew all these years later it would become so much a part of Anna-Marie.

“Wow
, mom!  This is amazing.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve gotten a little carried away
,” Anna laughs.

“No, it’s beautiful.”

“Well, thank you.  I don’t have much else to do now since I retired.”  Anna had started in the public school system the year after Anna-Marie was born.  First, she was a teacher, then she became vice principal and then a principal until she finally retired last year after Dylan’s death. 

Her mom stops and turns to her, “
Anna-Marie, what is really going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t been staying at your apartment, you actually left Wilmington, and by God, you truly do look happy.  You aren’t the same girl I saw a month ago.”

“Well, let’s just say I’ve seen the light.”

“Does the light come in the shape of a man?”

“Well, actually it does.”

“Ahh . . . that’s what I thought.  Who is he?”

“His name is Alessandro, but that’s really not why I came here.”

“Are you seriously trying to change the subject after telling me you met someone?”

“Yes
, I am, but only because it’s so new and I am so out of practice with all this.  I’m still trying to figure it all out.”

She squints at her
.  “So why is it that you came then?”

“I’m ready to know.”

“Ready to know what?”

“About my adoption.  It struck me the other day that when I found out, you seemed like you wanted to talk about it, as if you knew something.  So I’m asking you now, what do you know?”

“Oh, honey, that was so long ago.  Why do you want to disrupt those old ghosts now?”

“Mom
, please.  I need to know.”

“Come on
, let’s go sit out on the pier.”

They walk down the pier through the marsh until they come to a stop at the end.  Summer is coming to an end but the weather is still warm, sadly
though for some reason there are no boats cruising down the waterway that feeds into the Neuse River. 

Anna
-Marie stares across the water at the brown cottage that is home to so many of her childhood memories.  The Williams’ cottage was her second home since the day Dylan’s family moved into it when they were in third grade.  Even now she can picture herself rowing her small wooden boat across the creek to his house when they were kids.  She closes her eyes to savor the memories.

The calmness of the water is so serene.  When
Anna-Marie was younger, she would sit out here for hours, either with a book or lying on the bench with her eyes closed listening to the water as it sloshed and slurped against anything that dare stand in its way.  There’s something about the water that has always captivated Anna-Marie.  Whether it be the breeze through the marsh causing the marsh grass and cattails to sway and hum as they rubbed together, or the sound of the water as it crashed against the wooden pier.   

Her mom sits on the bench first while
Anne-Marie opens her eyes and continues to stare off at the water.  Anna has always thought the water had healing powers.  Powers her daughter has needed for some time now.  It’s a big reason she has been trying to get her back home this past year.

Anna
-Marie breaks her meditation and turns to sit beside her mother.

“Okay
, mama, spill.  What is it that you know?”

Her mom stares off at the water
, seemingly lost in her own mediation.  “I knew your birth mom.”

“You did?”  This is news
Anna-Marie didn’t expect.

“Yep, we grew up together right here on this creek.  Her name was Marie.”

“Marie?  But that is my name.”

“Yes, I named you after both of your mamas.”

“Wow, I had no clue.”

“Honey, she wasn’t a bad person.  What happened to her should never happen to a person, especially not someone like her.”

Anna-Marie tries to swallow through the grit in her throat.  “What happened to her?”

“Our whole lives we had been best friends.  It was just me and her.  Once I started dating your father, we swore we would never let a boy come between us.  The three of us were inseparable.  We even went to college together at Washington State University. 
We wanted to completely change our lives and live free and we traveled across the country to do it.  I think the only reason any of our parents let us go was because the three of us were all going to be there together.  Nonetheless, my father put a lot of pressure on your father to look after us.  After our college graduation the three of us took off for the big city of Seattle for our first time to celebrate before returning back here.

“We spent a fun
-filled week there and on our last night there the three of us went to a dance club.  Things were so much more innocent and proper back then.  Sure it was 1979, but to us, coming from here we still lived like we were in the 1960’s.  Marie was always a finicky little thing.”  She turns to her daughter for the first time and smiles, “Which is where you get it from.

  “She refused to settle for just anybody, but she spotted a man that she fancied, so when he asked her for her hand to dance she accepted.

“I can’t honestly tell you what happened next.  To this day I have felt guilty for that.  Your father and I got so caught up in the heat of the moment we lost track of her.  We just figured she went off somewhere to talk to the stranger she was dancing with.  None of us ever thought about rapist or kidnappers.  It was just unheard of to us coming from this secluded little creek.

“It wasn’t until a few hours lat
er when we found out we were very wrong.  On our way out of the club we started down the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel.  I heard crying coming from an alley.  Me, being the southern busy body that I am, had to see what was wrong.

“For the rest of my life I will never forget what I saw.  Marie was lying on the ground.  Her
pretty dress was dirty and torn.  Her body was beaten and bloody.  Anna-Marie, I almost didn’t even recognize her.”

Anna
-Marie puts her hand over her mouth.  “That’s so horrible, mama.”

Anna
-Marie no longer hears the rhythmic sloshing of the water.  The only sound she hears is her mother’s voice and the ache that still remains in her heart.

“Yes
, it was.  Marie said he was some kind of an animal, that he wasn’t human at all.  One minute he was a handsome charming man and in the next she said he had razor sharp teeth and dead eyes.  She was talking crazy, no doubt in shock and delirious from the attack.  She was so terrified she refused to call the police, no matter how much we protested.”

Oh
, my God! Razor sharp teeth and dead eyes?  The Rogue!  Wait!  Didn’t Alessandro say the Brotherhood was in Washington during that time, when his mom was killed?
The coincidence makes her skin crawl.